$20 Nokia 105 isn’t smart, but it will be hugely popular

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

If you followed this week’s coverage of the Mobile World Congress you would have heard the terms like “Tegra”, “Snapdragon”, and “quad-core” fairly often. These buzzwords lingered in the Barcelona air, as smartphone manufacturers tried to outdo one another with smarter phones and more powerful specs delivering increased processing power, better screens, and an operating systems that are feature rich. One phone manufacturer decided to head in the other direction. Meet the Nokia 105, the $20 phone.

The Nokia 105 has a 1.4-inch 128 x 128 resolution display, comes in at a minute 107 x 44.8 x 14.3mm, and weighs only 70 grams. It packs 8MB of storage and 384 KB of RAM. Nokia says its 800 mAh battery will get 35 days of standby and 12.5 hours of talk time.

While it seems like the Nokia 105 jumped off a time machine with the hardware of yesteryear, the device does have a market — in the developing world. Many developing countries are skipping installing infrastructure for landlines and instead erecting cell phone antennas. Thus, the market for mobile phones is booming.

Blackberry (then RIM) has had great success marketing low-end smartphones in the developing world, particularly in Africa and southeast Asia. Its success was astronomical: while market shares of RIM were tanking in the western world, the company was reportedly enjoying rock star status in the developing world. Blackberry sales in South Africa and Indonesia dominated the market leaving Apple and Samsung in the dust.

As Nokia has some experience in the market, the Nokia 105 might be a hit. While its hardware is less than spectacular, the quality of the industrial design is no different from Nokia’s flagship phone — the Lumia 900. The 105’s color screen, while simple and small, shines bright and is color rich; the plastic build is rugged and sturdy.

As the economy of the developing world grows with a bullish like fashion, the hunger for consumer electronics, albeit cheap, only increases. A well built and inexpensive phone is sure to be a market success.